Did You Tip Your Doorman This Year? Do You Know Why?

Newsboys used a yearly "carrier's address" to solicit holiday tips. They started a persistent tradition. Source: Library Company of Philadelphia

Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Tipping at Christmas and New Year’s
is a long-standing American custom. We tend to give a little
extra around the holidays to those who provide personal, often
intimate, services -- the people who deliver our mail, cut our
hair, clean our houses, care for our children, and open the
doors to our apartment buildings.

We can thank newsboys for popularizing this tradition
centuries ago. The “carriers” who delivered the first American
newspapers to subscribers were typically printers’ assistants.
Like many in today’s service industries, they often worked for
low wages, or only for room and board, and relied on yearly tips
as crucial supplements to their income.

To encourage these tips, newsboys delivered an annual
“carrier’s address” to each subscriber, on Christmas or New
Year’s Day. Printed on a large broadside sheet, like a poster, a
carrier’s address contained original verse recapping the major
events from the previous year, offered good wishes for the New
Year, and reminded patrons of the faithful service they had
received from their carrier. The first known address was printed
in 1720, and the practice persisted at least until the 1950s.

Soliciting Cash

The addresses were partly genuine expressions of thanks and
good wishes. But newsboys also weren’t shy about asking for
money. One delivery boy for the New York Gazette placed an ad in
his own newspaper on Jan. 2, 1758, asking his patrons to be
generous, even though he was a day late getting out his annual
address. Having to deliver the weekly paper on New Year’s Day,
he had his hands full:

“Lawrence Sweeney, the Carrier of the New York Gazette,
hopes the Customers thereto will REMEMBER his past Services, by
a New Year’s Gift,” the ad read, “when he waits on them Tomorrow
with his YEARLY VERSES, the Expedition with which he travels on
Mondays not allowing him Time even to take any Thing that may be
offered him ToDay.”

The text of such addresses was highly idiosyncratic. Verses
ranged from the humorous and satirical to the dry and serious.
Their authors included newspaper editors, well-known figures
such as Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Webster, and the young
carriers themselves. Incorporating state-of-the-art printing
techniques and covering topics ranging from war to temperance,
taxes to fashion, they captured the zeitgeist. Yet despite their
diversity, the addresses were united in a single purpose -- to
solicit cash.

Then, as now, a good tip depended on the customer’s
disposition, disposable income and relationship with the service
provider. Persuasive carriers and those working urban routes did
quite well. Joseph T. Buckingham, who would become an
influential editor and politician, recalled his New Year’s
windfall in 1797 from some 30 patrons of the Greenfield Gazette
in Massachusetts:

“I counted my wealth, -- six dollars and seventy-five
cents, -- all in quarters and eighths of a dollar, -- and locked
it in my chest! Never before had I been the owner of so much
money, -- never before so rich.”

Working as an apprentice at the Columbian Centinel in
Boston, Samuel Woodworth received $10 in tips on New Year’s Day
in 1802, which he used to buy presents for his family, including
an almanac and a pair of candlesticks. According to historian
Gerald D. McDonald, between 1860 and 1865, carriers in New York
were collecting a total of $5,000 in tips each year.

Obligations, Bribes

Carriers referred to these payments as “gifts,” and patrons
received a printed address as their thanks and acknowledgement.
More importantly, generous tippers secured another year of
attentive service, making annual gratuities resemble obligations
or bribes more than largesse. Thinking of it more as a monetary
exchange than an expression of sentiment, a recipient of a
carrier’s address in 1865 in Colorado wrote on his copy, “Cost
me 50 cents.”

Other service providers -- such as bootblacks, watchmen,
street sweepers and lamplighters -- adopted the practice in the
early 19th century. Although their annual addresses never really
caught on as they had for newsboys, these workers expected
annual tips just the same.

By the early 20th century, Americans felt so oppressed by
tipping obligations (both at holiday time and throughout the
year) that they launched an anti-tipping crusade. It wasn’t
effective. By mid-century, publications such as Good
Housekeeping were publishing tipping guides for the holidays,
and everyone from financial experts to etiquette advisers
weighed in on the fraught nature of the Christmas gratuity.

“A tip during the holidays was down payment on better
service in the coming year,” wrote Kerry Segrave, author of
“Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities.” In large
part, we have the newspaper carriers to thank for that.

(Wendy Woloson is an independent scholar and consulting
historian. Her most recent book is “In Hock: Pawning in America
from the Revolution to the Great Depression.” The opinions
expressed are her own.)